Chhaya Bhardwaj

The London School of Economics ‘ Global School of Sustainability and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, launched the Global trends in climate change litigation: 2026 snapshot (the 2026 Report), in collaboration with the Columbia Law School’s Columbia Climate School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law on 25th June 2026. The report brings out key trends and developments in climate change litigation across the globe for the calendar year 2025 through May 2026.

The report summarises the analysis across five themes, i.e., naturation; expansion and innovation; pushback; complexity; and implementationand impacts of climate litigatoin globally. The overall analysis in the report does not limit itself to the calendar year 2025 through May 2026 and presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of climate litigation since 2015.

From an Indian perspective, it is important to highlight that several Indian cases that would fall within the five themes mentioned above are missing from the report. The Climate Law and India Initiative will aim to fill the gap in the report by conducting a in-dept analysis or reported and unreported climate litigation in the five categories. Among the five categories mentioned above, three are more relevant than others when discussing and reporting climate litigation in India. The first is expansion and innovation, where new types of cases are filed across a range of developmental (economic) activities. This category includes cases concerning infrastructure, emissions, and climate change and other environmental problems like pollution.

The second category, and perhaps the category that has most unreported cases, is the Complexity category. In this category, there are growing number of cases in India where ongoing climate action is in conflict with the justice and fairness for affected communities or entities. This implies, there is surge in cases in India where climate measure are allegedly impacting several aspects of environment, and human rights. For example, in M K Ranjithsinh versus Union of India (2025), the Supreme Court of India looked at India’s solar and wind energy projects and the implementation of the project as they continued to threaten one of the most threatened species of birds in India – The Great Indian Bustard. In its order, the Supreme Court ruled that “non new Wind turbine should be allowed in the revised Priority Area… and the expansion of existing solar parks should not be permitted” (para 67). Additionally, the Court also ruled that “no new overhead powerlines except through dedicated power corridors” should be installed (para 67). This order by the Apex Court in India, falls within the complexity category of the 2026 Report, highlighting the nuances of climate measures, that conflict with other aspects of the environment. There are other unreported litigation from India that falls within this category and will be reported in the coming days by the author(s).

The third important category which deserves adequate attention in the Indian context is the Impacts and Implementation Category. However, this category will not be discussed in detail through this platform, because of limitations of data available. The aspects of impacts and implementation cannot be effectively discussed without verifiable data on certain metrics. However, some of the aspects of impacts and implementation of climate litigation in India, will be discussed on this platform.

The 2026 Report presents a succinct analysis of the climate litigation data available to the authors. However, there is a considerable number of litigation from India, not specifically categorised as climate litigation, that deserves some attention. As we move forward with reading and reviewing the 2026 report, we will publish articles consisting of litigation from India that was missed in the 2026 Report.